The Christmas Parrot

Every year the news and well-meaning current affairs shows warn you, a pet is for life, never buy a pet for someone as a Christmas present. They show the sad faces of puppies and kittens, given as presents and discarded to next day. So what did I do? I bought my husband, Mark, a pet Eclectus parrot for a Christmas present. 

Mark had been keen on birds (the feathered variety) for a long time. He’d had budgies as a kid and we had a cockatiel or two as a part of our family on and off. Cockatiels are very cute, but when it comes to being an honest to goodness pirate-parrot, they just don’t quite cut it. They might whistle at you and say a few words, but when it comes to helping you sing that sea-shanty over a bottle of rum, they’d probably just flee across the room and perch on top of the curtain rail, or give you a cute tweet while looking at you like you’ve lost your senses. That’s perfect for some people, but Mark was after something more.

  He went to one of the bird sales, which take place all across the country, several times a year. Bird breeders take dozens of their birds to sell, while picking up produce and supplies and betting on what type of bird would escape and end up flying around the pavilion (it’s usually a finch). He fell in love with how the male Eclectus (or Eckies) looked and decided he wanted one. Eclectus are so named because they look eclectic. The females have bright blue heads, dark red bodies, black beaks and an attitude. The males, however, are bright green, with bright blue and red under their wings, orange beaks and tend to be big sooks. I wouldn’t recommend you put your finger in the cage of one, they can still bite, but hand-raised ones make the better pets than the females. 

In short, the Eckie looks like the epitome of the classic parrot, with or without the pirate. They’re also considered the third-best talkers of the parrot world, after the African Grey and the Amazon. Who better to teach to say “arrr” and “yo ho ho?) 

For Mark, it was love at first sight; he had his heart set on getting an Eckie, even with no knowledge of the bird and everything based on how colourful they were. It was exactly how not to choose a pet bird. Or dog. Or cat. In fact, our cat...well that’s another story.

Being a loving wife, I arranged for a hand-raised male for my husband from a guy we met at another bird sale. We did do something right, we'd gone to see the man's aviaries and knew just the circumstances the birds were hatched and raised in. We decided he was someone we could trust. We contacted him and asked if he had any hand-raised Eckies. He did, but they were too young to be sold yet. A reputable breeder will made sure the bird is fully weaned before you buy them. If they don’t, steer clear of them.

So we waited a couple of months. The breeder sent us baby photos via email and requested a name so they could get him used to us before he came to live with us. Mark took one look at the email and named the bird Cosmo. About a month after Christmas, Cosmo was finally ready. Mark drove to Sydney and came home with a young, very cute but scared bird, with a beak which looked, to me, enormous.

Cosmo is a large bird, about the size of a cockatoo, with a large beak. He's perfectly capable of taking off a finger if he wants to, and we had two young children who had less experience with animals than we did. What were we thinking?